


lives darkly in my body

by Good0mens



Series: sonnet xvii [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anal Sex, Bottom Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Explicit Sexual Content, I cannot stress this enough, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Michelangelo bashing, POV Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Pablo Neruda's Poetry, Poetry, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Relationship Study, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sexual Content, Top Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Tumblr Prompt, ambiguous timeline, as per usual, cmon its me what did you think, implied bottom Nicky, implied top Joe, many tumblr prompts, pov switching, they switch :), too many godamn metaphors, unecessarily long sex scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:53:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29482521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good0mens/pseuds/Good0mens
Summary: "Maybe it’s the way Nicky is holding him as time dances clumsily across the decades, maybe it’s the decadent despair of grieving a man that’s standing right next to him. He’s tired in that way that old oak creaks when you press your palms to it. That way it splits, splinters down the spine if you push too hard. That way some wounds cut you when you press your fingers to the sharp gaping hole it creates."Joe and Nicky contemplate the same things seperately, across centuries, and Joe has some disagreements about Neruda.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: sonnet xvii [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153466
Comments: 37
Kudos: 141





	lives darkly in my body

**Author's Note:**

> BOY this fic took much longer than expected, almost a week overdue, mostly because I had A LOT of doubt about using prompts to form the bulk of it. I'm still a little apprehensive about it, but thank you to those on tumblr who helped assure me along the way.
> 
> I spent many, many eye-twitching hours staring at this, and I'm still not? sure? that it will make complete sense to anyone but me, but trust me, there are about 100 motifs/ideas in here that I've tried to repeat and juxtapose in Nicky and Joe's sections, and I hope at least some of them are noticeable or comprehensible. 
> 
> We're basically playing with this idea of dark/light, death/creation, hiding/exposing, and fear/faith and how it relates to love and each side of their relationship. did that make sense? idk, we'll see

_When he was young, Nicolò believed that godliness was held in the cradle of the earth by the sun._

_When he met Yusuf, he knew he was right._

_He’s the sun as in blinding, as in burning, as in too bright to look directly at him without it hurting. Just as beautiful in the coming and the going of him._

_They’re laid out underneath a sky which looks like one giant wound, torn open in front of them. The swollen air and the sand spread out before them. The drowsy sun, rising slowly into view._

* * *

Joe can see the moment that Nicky notices the dried blood on Joe’s neck again, because the muscle in his jaw ticks. They’ve just finished shucking off their clothes in the small bathroom, and Joe has been desperately avoiding looking in the vanity mirror and the back of Nicky’s head.

He pauses next to Joe, lifts his hand up to brush a knuckle down the side of his face, until his index finger rests over the curve of his neck. His gaze is devouring every bit of skin exposed to him. And it’s all exposed, all bared open for Nicky.

“I saw the way you lunged at them, my love. You did all you could,” Joe says softly, taking Nicky’s hand and kissing his palm.

Nicky drops his hands to Joe’s waist, drawing Joe in close. His jaw is still clenched, and his eyes are still making a clenched fist of Joe’s heart where they linger beneath his jaw. He can almost hear the pulse of _not enough, not enough, not enough_ in Nicky’s own heart and Joe can’t help but ache.

“You would have torn them apart with your bare hands for me, wouldn’t you?”

Nicky makes a low noise in his throat at that, hands tightening at Joe’s sides. There’s old fragments of language and broken oaths shattering him apart, but every incandescent indent of Nicky’s fingerprints along the small of his back feels like he’s touching Joe down to the endless mortal coil marrow of his bones.

_(When they drove the nail into your palms, was there a part of you that didn’t want to leave?_

_When Judas killed himself for betraying you, with the wine-soaked bread that you gave him still bitter on his tongue, did he go to heaven or to hell?_

_Are your hands still aching? Are his?)_

He lets Joe wash his hair with shaky fingers, lets Joe take care of him in this simple way. They’re ignoring the red ribbons of blood streaking down, down, down Nicky’s shoulders and thighs before circling the drain. He’s not thinking about the red rings around Andromache’s wrists from when she ripped through the flesh to get to Quynh. He’s not thinking about the red chafed lines on Nicky’s wrists from the zip ties.

* * *

_There’s a dark, murky thing in Nicolò’s heart; he’s watching how the morning light is cutting shapes across his own body. How the light is touching everything it can, dispelling the shadows, lifting the darkness like a healing bruise, turning everything orange and yellow._

_No one told him that being seen is a sunburn – a deep exposure, a peeling back of layers to reveal the softness underneath. It’s violent, violating and visceral, and Nicolò is completely helpless to resist the heat on his skin as Yusuf looks at him again._

* * *

Nicky’s index finger traces the line along his collarbone, across atlas-broad and heavy shoulders, up to his neck where Merrick stabbed him. He has to rub his thumb over the spot a few times to scrape off the old, dried blood; Joe would much rather have the red lines from Nicky’s nails scratched into his skin than anything else.

Would rather have his teeth, his sword, his blood- anything that shows he’s Nicky’s. Anything that makes his body feel like more than a tired, trembling tune. The lump in his throat is rising upward, a bitten-off chunk of apple, or maybe it’s his own swallowed tongue from words he can’t bring himself to utter.

Nicky’s palm rests over the spot on Joe’s neck, drawing him in closer. He kisses an earthquake into Joe’s body, spinning pure gold out of his heartstrings. Joe runs his hand down the crevasse of Nicky’s spine and Nicky shudders in return, pulling away.

Maybe it’s the way Nicky is holding him as time dances clumsily across the decades, maybe it’s the decadent despair of grieving a man that’s standing right next to him. He’s tired in that way that old oak creaks when you press your palms to it. That way it splits, splinters down the spine if you push too hard. That way some wounds cut you when you press your fingers to the sharp gaping hole it creates.

_(I am almost okay. I am mostly okay. I am ~~thinking about how exile means to be barred from one’s home, how we are his home;~~_

_~~how Euripides saw it as a fate worse than death, its own kind of cage~~ _

_not sure what okay means anymore.)_

Nicky kisses him then, and the exhalation of his breath in Joe’s lungs is a prayer that says: _let’s swallow that solemn, mourning moon into a new day._

* * *

_Yusuf is watching him with those beautiful dark eyes, illuminated by sunlight like some mythical being. Nicolò swallows, throat tight with emotion. Thinks about how he would have Yusuf_

_for a heartbeat_

_for as long as the sun still burned_

_forever_

_and still not have enough. Not enough of his skin, or his laughter, or his gaze burning into Nicolò, burning up Nicolò._

* * *

“Nicky-”

“ _Shh, tesoro_ ,” Nicky’s palm fits in the curve of Joe’s jaw, and then there’s warm lips devouring his own.

Desire makes its way up from Joe’s stomach, carves into his breastbone, settling deep into the marrow there. Nicky moves with a rippling purpose, and Joe is offering himself up like the hilt of his naked sword.

The air is perfumed with sweat and sultry humidity. He’s almost groggy with languid, piercing desire, disoriented and throbbing with the heat in his gut.

Nicky’s panting from the exertion, sweat making his forehead shine, hair plastered upward from Joe raking his fingers through it. His chest is blotched red from flushing, but he’s showing no signs of stopping just yet, hips swivelling _just_ that much deeper inside of Joe.

It reminds him of an old, dark summer tucked away in Florence. Of watching Nicolò split open the furrowed flesh of the apricot, with his thumbs hooked in the soft divots. How he wanted to be held in Nicolò’s palms like that, to be the sweetness soaking his fingers.

“ _Il mio._ ” _Mine._

Back then, the word _love_ in Ligurian still felt foreign in that indefinable way – like the way the apricots tasted different suckled from the tip of Nicolò’s tongue. How it felt like swallowing a beast into his belly when Nicolò fed him his cock for the first time later that afternoon, full of fruit and falsehoods like; _surely, this immense, terrifying feeling with subside with time._

There’s a dream he’s been having, where Allah presses a star-dusted kiss to his forehead and tells him everything is going to be alright. And then Nicky’s mossy, messiah eyes are there, and there’s a green thumb between his teeth, ivory and ivy planted in his gums, spilling out from his mouth like moonlight.

Everything lately has been nothing but a heaving sigh of regret. Their love becomes the distance between their bodies as they lie dead on that floor, into just the aching, yearning space when Nicky slips out of their bed at night to pray for their brother when he thinks Joe is asleep.

Joe wants to climb into Nicky’s body, to see what he sees, to have Nicky sink his teeth and cock into him until nothing can separate them.

* * *

_He always thought that the things he could be loved or forgiven for were done by his shaking hands. Either gripping a blade or a cross –_

_(you cannot hold sunlight in your palms, but still his fingers are outstretched toward you, and the only thing he’s asking from you is to slip your own between the gaps)_

_\- Or another’s hand._

_And damn it all if the fading afternoon light behind Yusuf, framing his beautiful curls, doesn’t look like a burning halo. Damn if his hands don’t look holy and open, like they could turn water into wine, like they could turn all this gore into something golden. Into something godly._

_(Sometimes, the sun dips low enough that you could reach out and graze it with your fingertips.)_

_And if Nicolò kissed him now, would it taste like sunlight? Would it burst open in his mouth and slide down his throat, expand and expand and expand until it’s pushing out underneath his skin?_

_(With his left hand, Yusuf is holding the earth still. The other is cupping your face.)_

* * *

All this love and laughter that he’s put in Nicolò’s body and there’s nothing to show for it but the persisting image of Nicky’s gunmetal mouth gasping back to life underneath him.

_Do you need to survive as badly as I need you to survive? Please say you do._

Joe lets out a groan and Nicky catches his lips again, distracting him with another molten kiss. It almost works, but the pulsing need between his legs, urgent and painful, makes him tears his mouth away.

“Nicky, please, I want to come-”

“You can come whenever you want, _amati._ But only on my cock,” Nicky breathes out, eyes glancing from Joe’s eyes to his lips, a glazed look on his face.

His hair is dangling over Joe’s face, and then he’s kissing Joe with that single-minded focus and skill that makes him an excellent sniper. It’s that heavy kind of attention, calling his bluff, catching every twitch and spasm of his trembling muscles.

He clenches around Nicky, and Nicky groans _Yusuf_ into his neck, and _oh_ , it’s been some time since his first name was spoken with such reverence. He barely recognises the shape of it on his skin.

His name in Nicky’s mouth, his blood in Nicky’s mouth, his body in Nicky’s mouth. Because this is the only way he knows who he is: through the resonance of his name from Nicolò’s lips. He is _Yusuf,_ because that is the sound Nicolò makes when he kisses him, in gasps or moans or murmurs.

Joe’s cock is flushed and _so hard_ , tip budding and beading pre-come. It would be _so easy_ to get his hand around it, the slide slick and tight, and then he’d come. But where would that get him?

Nicky skims a hand down his side, brushes just past his cock and Joe jerks violently. He thinks he lets out a whine or a moan. He’s no longer sure, grounded so deep into his body that all that’s left is sensation.

“Shh, I’m not going anywhere tonight,” he hears Nicky assure him, “and neither are you.”

The gaps in Nicky’s words, all the things he’s _not_ saying, are a foreign language.

(Fill these unsatisfying spaces. Fill them up with something thick, like resin, like honey, like blood. Fill them up until you choke on it.)

* * *

_Yusuf has known Nicolò as a starved, furious thing – more martyr than man, throwing himself into an awful crusade, throwing himself on the sword, on his knees in the sand._

_It means Yusuf knows him, knows the terrible, ugly parts of himself – and still he remains by Nicolò’s side, in the battered shelter of his arms; the ache that is the dip of his throat, bared like he’d let Yusuf do anything to him. And he would._

_(It’s all yours; the blood, the fury, the gentleness – it all belongs to you.)_

_It means that Yusuf knows, even as he presses a kiss to his palms, that Nicolò was made from the same stuff they pierced Christ to the cross with; that he was made from something sharp and inevitable._

_If Yusuf carved him open right now, would he bleed crimson wine, or the molten gold that he feels is running through his veins?_

* * *

He’s got a heart for a throat and clumsy hands grasping Nicky’s back. He can feel the muscles shifting as Nicky moves inside of him. He trails a finger over the sensitive nerve that runs next to Nicky’s spine. Nicky shivers and the next thrust in is a little harsher, a little less controlled. _God,_ he wants Nicky to lose control, to slip too deep, to grip him too tightly – _show me you need this as badly as I do._

Nicky is all broad shoulder blades cut across white fabric, clean-shaved, loose-limbed as he pours his heat into Joe’s skin. Goldenrod light framing his body; do Nicky’s fingertips throb, unfulfilled, like Joe’s do?

It’s in Arabic that he confesses to Nicky that the ecstatic frustration he feels will surely be his demise. Nicky makes a considering hum, pinning Joe with the ocean depth of his eyes, but he doesn’t alter his movements between Joe’s thighs.

Instead, Nicky races along the back of Yusuf’s skull, circles the cradle of his cerebellum:

_Do you feel it here?_

He runs it down around Joe’s neck, fingers trailing across his larynx, his clavicle, before finally resting over his sternum.

_What about here?_

Down, down, down, to the freckles along his iliac furrow, _so close_ to where he needs it.

_And here?_

The man above him is archaic, battle-worn and angelic fury wrapped in big hands and old bones. Salt, rust, burn, bury - listen, there’s no agony as beautiful as this: as loving a man soaked in blood and benevolence in equal measure.

* * *

_Nicolò wants to be gripped by Yusuf like the hilt of his saif – cleaned of bloodshed by reverent hands and wielded with care. To have his edges run along carefully, blade whet as his desire. Balanced, purposeful, instead of the trembling mess of limbs that he is now._

_Desert figged fingers, ripening in his mouth. The blasphemy blooming from his parted lips. Nicolò tells himself it’s no better than the blood, really, but the cries are much sweeter._

_He burns in each place where Yusuf touches him; the imprint along his jaw where Yusuf’s fingers caress him, the palm-shaped divot between his shoulder blades._

_Nicolò thinks about the pink marks fading from his skin from and pretends that it’s enough to pretend._

* * *

Everything feels abstract and yet too sharp. Nicky is everything; the all and the _more, more, more._ Joe can only focus the beckoning of his eyes and the reckoning of his hands on Joe’s body.

His body has been fractured open with those hands, and still Joe loves him.

He has dragged his fingers along the small of Nicolò’s back, the crook of his nose, the gentle swell of his navel. He could recreate him sightless, in marble, alabaster, charcoal, paint – has watched Nicolò’s spine recreate itself, after it shattered, once. Has dipped his fingers in Nicolò’s open throat and traced his exposed jaw with crimson, shaking fingers.

He’s never thought of himself as truly infallible, as unbreakable; he’s been killed too many times to believe otherwise. His skin will split open on a blade, his blood vessels will rupture and contusions will rise underneath his flesh. He is still only a man.

But Nicky’s shaking him right down the foundations of his body, threatening to tear him down the middle like a ripe apricot.

(Joe would let him,

and he’d say _thank you_ ,

and he’d say, _again_.)

* * *

_In the Bible, when Jacob wrestled with the angel, the holy being touched the sinew of his thigh and Jacob was irrevocably changed, causing him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life._

_Yusuf’s hand grasps the muscle there, as he pushes the breath out of Nicolò’s lungs, and Nicolò craves and craves and craves._

_(You have made me who I am; does that make you a god?_

_Do you feel like one, unmaking me with your lips on the top knob of my spine, turning ridged bone to bowed drawstring?)_

* * *

He wants Nicolò to cover his body and press against his temple, his chest, his throat until all he feels is Nicolò and nothing else.

Maybe if he can keep Nico here, between his legs, in his arms, he won’t go do something stupid. Maybe if he can keep Nico here, he won’t lose him.

“Promise that you’ll never leave me,” a choked whisper into Nicky’s skin.

Nicky doesn’t answer him, but he kisses Joe again with the fierce desperation of a lover who can’t bring himself to make another empty promise. Joe’s next moan sounds more like a sob than anything else.

 _This_ is the dark thing that lives in Joe’s body – he’s got a fear that no prayer can soothe, a terror that tears through his torso and his throat until he’s cleaved in two and not even Nicky’s hands can put him back together.

_(Hold me until my body feels more like a body and less like a wreckage._

_Tell me about my mother, and the first bone I broke, the first boy I loved – how it all ended in heartbreak; how my mother left her body to the earth, how the snap was clean but the healing was messy and tell me, tell me, tell me that this won’t end in heartbreak too._

_Tell me this won’t end.)_

Nicky swallows him up in another kiss, and it ends.

* * *

Michelangelo warned him, once: _Surely, you will tire of him, should you insist on turning him inside and out in your hands. You will wreck him in your efforts to understand him and then when you look at him, you will see nothing but a disembodied figure._

As if love was one of Caravaggio’s figs, rotting and splitting at the sides.

A pink dusk, husky and hooded, languid. The ghost of a moon peeking out from behind the dappled curtain of evening. You know those times when you look up and see a crescent crevice of light in the afternoon, a little earlier than you imagined you’d see it, but there it hangs, insistent and beautiful just the same?

That’s what loving Nicky is like.

The days are getting impatient as they approach winter, coming up shorter and shorter. Auburn Autumn, with its shaking, skeleton leaves dropping everywhere. Nicky’s cold, pink nose pressed into his neck. Billowing warm breaths and naked boughs.

Sunrise comes later, so Joe spends more time in bed each morning with Nicky keeping him warm, as the night starts _dying into now._

And Neruda told them of this, too:

_Nobody keeps any of what he has,_

_and life is only_

_a borrowing_

_of bones_

and maybe this is true, but there’s something deeper that keeps him here with Nicky. Darker than terror, graver than death – Nicky has killed him in every way that matters, but still he remains, in the wake of his arms, in the wake of each shuddering, shimmering dawn.

When he and Nicky finally give their bones back to the dirt, the excavation will reveal each divot in his ribcage, crafted for Nicky’s fingers, and the shape of Nicky’s skull which fits underneath his chin. His patella curved into the back of Nicky’s own knee.

His palm, Nicky’s cheek. His open mouth, Nicky’s curved upper lip. His lungs, Nicky’s breath.

Is love the dark negative space, then? Or all the light they make by filling it with each other?

* * *

_When he was young, Nicolò thought that love like this was found in the dark shadows of bodies pressed up against each other, hidden between quiet moans, behind closed eyelids._

_When he met Yusuf, he knew he was wrong._

_It’s all splayed and splayed out, legs and palms and his thumping heart. It’s all spread and sprawling, rolling into him like mountains, open like the mouth of the river, hands raking through him like fresh soil._

_(He said, Let there be light, and there was you.)_

**Author's Note:**

> let me know if you liked this! I'm going a little insane trying to decide if this was a worthy experiment.  
> I'm on [tumblr](https://peachpitandpomegranate.tumblr.com/) if you wanna yell at me there! My ask box is always open


End file.
